Dear future student, Thanks again for having chosen HEC Paris and welcome on board!

I am very excited by the profile of students recruited this year for both tracks and I am confident you will all spend a fantastic year with us, learning not only from your Professors but also from your peers! I would like to draw your attention to a few important steps to optimize the start of the program.

I) Logistics (i) For non-EU citizens Please make sure to get all the administrative paperwork done in time: from past experience, we have learned that it is best to allow for unexpected delays in processing visa documents. While we always try our best to accommodate late arrivals, it is always costly for students who have missed valuable material. If it is your first stay in France you should arrive with a student visa called "VLS-TS" type D. Once at HEC the International Office will take care of you. In case you to need to renew your resident permit, you will be able to apply through IO upon arrival on campus. We also recommend you enquire about conditions to obtain a tourism visa for the UK in addition to your student visa for France. This is in preparation for the job interviews in London which may start as early as the first weeks of October and for which you will typically get very short notice (48 or 72 hours). The optimal strategy for the citizens of many countries is to request for a 6 months tourist visa for UK from your home country just before leaving for France and to renew it later in the year if necessary. (ii) For all students Please be aware that official pictures for the Class' CV-book will be taken on the first day of the program, namely on Tuesday September 4th. We thus request you wear business attire on that day (good news for students staying on campus: pictures will be taken in the afternoon so you don't necessarily need to be formal in the morning!).

II) Introductory week The first week of the program does not comprise any formal lectures but includes a series of conferences and workshops mostly targeted toward soft skills and placement. All MIF students are required to attend at least three of the following items (you may choose _and are even encouraged_ to participate to all workshops): W1: Conference by Laurent Chouraki, COO of BNP Paribas on the impact of the new regulatory constraints on the activities of investment banks W2: Conference by Pierre Blanchet, Head of Multi Asset Sales, HSBC, on a global macro analysis of financial markets (current situation and future perspectives)

W3: Conference by Batrice Guynamant, former trader and HR in various investment banks, on the assessment process in investment banks (focus on assessment centers for summer interns and analysts) W4: CV-Workshop. This workshop requires participants to send an updated version of their CV + screen prints of application forms to an investment bank one week in advance (details TBA). You get a 15 minutes personal one-to-one debrief on both. W5: Mock interview workshop (by groups of 8). This workshop requires participants to prepare a 3-minute pitch in the context of a job interview (who you are, which position you are applying for and why you are well suited for the position). Both the pitches and the group debrief with Batrice Guynamant are video-taped. Warning: seeing oneself on the video may be a traumatizing experience! Please be also aware that longer, one-to-one, mock interviews will also be organized later in the year by HEC's career service. W6: Case study workshops. This workshop puts participants in the situation of a group case study as implemented in assessment centers of investment banks. This workshop takes place later in September-October. Please send asap your choices of W1/W2/W3/W4/W5/W6 (pick at least 3) to Bernadette Georges at georgesb@hec.fr

III) Placement (investment banking) You should know that the online application process for jobs and/or summer internships in international banks has early application deadlines. Furthermore, many banks start processing files before the deadline, which puts latecomers to a competitive disadvantage. This implies that successful candidates will have filled up all their applications by (latest) the end of September for people looking for full-time jobs (analyst or associate, depending on years of experience in the banking industry) and by mid-October for people looking for summer internships. You should also be aware that the application process is extremely time consuming. I therefore strongly advise you to at least browse through the websites of the banks during the summer and, ideally, start preparing your application (please note that students who chose the W4 workshop are required to have updated their CV and started filling up at least one on-line application before Sept 4th) I also recommend the reading of the "Vault Guides" which will soon be available through the admitted student portal (expected last week of June) and the first part of the book Heard on the Street", which you will find referred in the short bibliography below.

IV) Academics a) MIF Business Track All MIF business track students are supposed to have covered basic material in financial accounting, corporate finance, investments, derivatives and statistics prior to joining HEC. If you have not done so, you are strongly advised to start doing some self study during the summer using the enclosed bibliography so as to be able to make full use of the courses in the program (some refresher courses will be offered during the first half of the Fall semester).

Students coming from programs with a less quantitative focus than the HEC MIF may also want to refresh on their multivariate calculus and matrix algebra during the summer. An important choice to make early on for MIF business track students is which block electives to take. There are two possibilities: either block electives in corporate finance or block electives in capital markets and asset management. As the name indicates, these courses come as a block: you either take all three block electives in corporate finance OR you take all three block electives in capital markets and asset management. The three block electives in corporate finance for 2012/13 are: (i) Advanced Financial Statement Analysis (offered as an elective for accelerated track students, not available in the Spring) (ii) Financial Modeling (also offered as an elective in the Spring for accelerated track students or for business track students who took the Capital Markets block electives in the Fall) (iii) Derivatives (the course roughly treats the same topics as the Asset Pricing Theory and FX Derivatives Trading block electives but in a shorter and less technical fashion, not available in the Spring) The three block electives in capital markets and asset management for 2012/13 are: (i) Quantitative Asset Allocation (core accelerated track, not available in the Spring) (ii) Asset Pricing Theory (core accelerated track, not available in the Spring) (iii) FX Derivatives Trading (core accelerated track, not available in the Spring) Up to date syllabi for all six courses will be made available before the start of the program. Students will have until the end of the first week of the program to make their choice of block electives known. However, if you already have made your choice, do not hesitate to send it to Bernadette Georges (georgesb@hec.fr) b) MIF Accelerated Track The MIF accelererated track curriculum is self-contained since finance courses are all starting at an introductory level. No summer homework is thus required... ...even though we STRONGLY suggest to all students a daily read of the financial press (FT, WSJ...). Among other benefits, you will find that the exercise is invaluable for your coming job interviews.

V) Bibliography I) Financial accounting and financial statement analysis J. Pratt: "Financial Accounting in an Economic Context", Wiley II) Introduction to finance and corporate finance M. Grinblatt et S. Titman: "Financial Markets and Corporate Strategy", Mc Graw-Hill P. Vernimmen, P. Quiry et al. "Corporate Finance: theory and practice", Wiley and sons III) Derivatives J. Hull: "Options, Futures and Other Derivatives", Prentice Hall

S. Neftci: "Mathematics of Financial Derivatives", Academic Press IV) Preparation to the job market T. Crack: "Heard on the Street: Quantitative Questions from Wall Street Job Interviews"

I wish you all a great summer and I am looking forward to seeing you again soon on campus! Jacques Olivier